07 November 2018

It was five years ago this month that ESA's GOCE gravity-mapping satellite finally gave way to gravity, but its results are still yielding buried treasure – giving a new view of the remnants of lost continents hidden deep under the ice sheet of Antarctica.

A research team from Germany's Kiel University and the British Antarctic Survey published their latest GOCE-based findings this week in the journal Scientific Reports.

Dubbed ‘the Formula one of space', the GOCE (Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer) mission orbited Earth for more than four years, from March 2009 to November 2013. This sleek, finned satellite with no moving parts was designed around a single goal: to measure the pull of Earth's gravity more precisely than any mission before.